The relationship between sales and marketing departments has traditionally been a fragmented one but as companies focus on ways to increase sales effectiveness, the mutual sharing of content and information between sales and marketing has emerged as a method to increase sales productivity. 

A recent survey of over 250 companies by Aberdeen Group found that 78 percent of Best-in-Class companies provide sales with access to a centralized repository of marketing materials.

As a result of this shared content between sales and marketing, Best-in-Class companies have improved time-to-close rates by nearly one day, compared to the increase of one day in time-to-close rates experienced by Laggards.

Aberdeen's latest report, "Sales Effectiveness: Leveraging Content to Close Deals," revealed that the top pressure causing all organizations to devise ways to increase sales productivity is the constant need to increase market share.

Despite the fact that Best-in-Class companies are 1.8 times as likely as others to rate themselves as "extremely aligned" in the area of branding and messaging, there is still a heavy implementation of technology solutions on the part of Best-in-Class companies to assure that an increase in sales productivity results in an increase in market share. 

For example, Best-in-Class companies utilize sales analytics (61 percent), content feedback solutions (39 percent), and closed-loop marketing (35 percent) to ensure that the processes designed to optimize sales win rates are successful.

Furthermore, none of Best-in-Class companies fail to measure lead conversion rates, compared to 4 percent of the industry average and 14 percent of laggards.